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Why Give?

Every life has value. This simple idea inspired our founder Anna Hunt Marsh to leave a bequest to create the Brattleboro Retreat in 1834. It motivates our expert caregivers today, and it also inspires our friends who stand with us to make our work possible.

To help channel your passion for helping others, we've created The Fund for the Brattleboro Retreat.

The Fund for the Brattleboro Retreat is an umbrella fund for all charitable gifts to the Hospital. One-hundred percent of all gifts to The Fund go directly to improving the lives of patients who face mental illness or addiction.

What does your gift do?

The Fund channels your generosity directly to initiatives that benefit patients. You provide critical support to people in need by helping us:

Give knowing that someone who may never learn your name will be grateful for a recovery started, a relationship mended, pain lessened, and a future renewed.

Give because your financial support literally saves lives. One hundred percent of the dollars you give go directly to improving care for people in crisis, helping us invest in talented caregivers, expand vital programs, and extend our reach to more people in need.

Give knowing that we get results. We provide care to thousands of people each year who return to their families, jobs, and communities with new hope and new tools for staying healthy.

Give with the understanding that mental illness and addiction can affect anyone. Income, status, age, and gender don't matter. What matters is how we respond.

Give because you know how important effective, accessible care is to the health of our communities. Even as the need increases, care is getting harder for people to find, making the Brattleboro Retreat more necessary than ever.

Give to the Brattleboro Retreat because there is no place like this. Here at the region's only dedicated mental health and addiction hospital, hundreds of experts work side by side, devoted to healing children, adolescents, and adults. We offer every kind of care at every level - from hospital stays to day programs to outpatient counseling - so all patients can take the path that's best for them.

Give because private support enables us to continue our mission, started more than 180 years ago, of providing the most advanced mental health and addiction treatment possible.

The Brattleboro Retreat was established in 1834 with a $10,000 bequest from Anna Hunt Marsh. The impact of her powerful example resonates to this day, and reminds us of the good that come from leaving a philanthropic legacy.

The following suggestions offer basic language you can use to establish a bequest to the Brattleboro Retreat:

"I give all [or _____ percent] of the rest, residue and remainder of my estate to the Brattleboro Retreat."

Your bequest can be designated for a specific purpose such as:

an endowment

a named fund.

We encourage you (or your attorney) to discuss your wishes with representatives of the Brattleboro Retreat's Office of Development to ensure that your intentions can be fulfilled and will match the Retreat's short- and long-term objectives.

If you have already included the Brattleboro Retreat in your estate plans, please let us know so we can include your intentions in our records and makes sure they are carried out in a timely and accurate way.

For more information about the Brattleboro Retreat's Planned Giving Program, please contact our Office of Development at 802-258-6898. You can also write to us at:

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The Brattleboro Retreat is a private, not-for-profit, specialty hospital offering comprehensive services designed to meet the mental health and addiction treatment needs of children, adolescents, and adults from all walks of life.